


Stephanie Brown Breaks the Internet

by Darkmagyk



Category: Batgirl (Comics), Batman (Comics)
Genre: Billionaires portrayed sympathetically, Fluff, Gen, Humor, Memes, Pre-New 52, Social Media, references to canon character death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:33:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26898994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darkmagyk/pseuds/Darkmagyk
Summary: In which Stephanie Brown becomes famous for being famous, finds a better way to pay for medical school, and guiltlessly exploits the Waynes.
Relationships: Barbara Gordon/Dick Grayson, Batfamily Members & Stephanie Brown, Stephanie Brown/Tim Drake
Comments: 11
Kudos: 176
Collections: Batfam Big Bang 2020





	Stephanie Brown Breaks the Internet

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the Batfamily Big bang. And I'll bit honestly. I kind of had a breakdown halfway through it and am still not over it. But I had the best team ever. 
> 
> @fantrash15 and @ sun-lit-roses made beautiful art for chapters 2 & 3 respectively!
> 
> And my amazing betas: bisexualoftheblade, darlinglissa, houser-of-stories

Once, when Stephanie was sixteen, she asked Batman for money to get her nails done. She’d done this for a lot of reasons: she wanted to get her nails done, she didn’t have any money, and she kind of liked being a pain in his ass because he was a pain in hers sometimes. 

He’d looked at her for a long, drawn out second, before he sighed and handed her five hundred-dollar bills.

So instead of going to the nail place in the strip mall down the street, sixteen-year-old Stephanie Brown had gone to a salon downtown, tipped 100%, and still managed to get new tires on her bike.

She’d also gotten a taste for luxury.

Or, no, she’d gotten a taste for luxury earlier, because her childhood relationship with money was a varied and complicated thing. Sometimes her dad was in jail and her mom had drawn her nurse’s salary, and there was always just enough food, but if she needed new shoes, they had to go to the thrift store. Sometimes her mom was on her pills, and the nice librarian would slip her one of the canned food donations that was used to pay off fines along with her Nancy Drew.

And then sometimes her dad had the money and was in a good mood. Whenever a heist had gone well, the Riddler had been caught but Cluemaster hadn’t, he’d wanted to treat himself and his family to the lifestyle of the rich and the famous he always thought he deserved. So, he might steal her a game system or spring for her mom to get her hair colored at Supercuts instead of out of a drug store or sign Stephanie up for gymnastics.

But there was middle class suburban luxury, and then there was _Wayne_ luxury.

Stephanie’s hands took a beating, so she liked a Wayne luxury style manicure complete with a long hand message and the good massage chairs.

She’d been coming to this nail salon for five years now, minus a brief stint of playing dead, always after mooching some money off a Wayne. Even if none of them partook in her now bi-monthly rituals.

Cass didn’t like strangers messing with her hands, so Stephanie normally did her nails before events. Dick and Babs went to a _trendier_ place across town, near the clock tower. Jason went to a place near Park Row popular with mob wives. Duke went to a place run by his cousin. Tim was a heathen who didn’t believe in cuticle care, and Bruce had a nail technician who went to his office every Wednesday at 2:30.

She had hope for Damian though. And she’d run into Kate at this very salon plenty over the years.

She’d gone with a shimmering violet this time, because she was Tim’s date to a gala on Friday, and she had to make up for his substandard hand maintenance with her pristine nails. She’d gotten the money from Jason though, which meant it probably had a little bit of blood on it. She’d acquired it via a bet, involving a hundred Robin nuggets and a perfect balance beam routine performed on the edge of a rooftop.

But Stephanie was probably the only woman who went to Luxe Nails while also shelving books in the library for work study. So, she only felt a little bad about it. And no one inside looked at her like she was Julia Roberts at the beginning of Pretty Woman anymore.

She smiled and slipped Misty, her nail artist, a hundred, and then went to the front to pay.

“You know,” said Grace, the owner, “if you tweet and post on Instagram a picture of your nails and tag us right now, I’ll give it to you for half price.”

Stephanie frowned. She hadn’t noticed that they were running any kind of social media related special. And 50% seemed like a high discount. But her Wphone was beyond encrypted and it wasn’t like she made any effort to hide that this was an element to her routine.

Still, she took the pictures and made the posts and then got two twenties in change.

“Thanks,” said Grace, “I know you don’t normally do promotions.”

“I love a good discount.” She grinned. And left the salon, thinking very little of it, and keeping half her attention on the hustle and bustle of Gotham City as she made her way to her car, parked in a lot for a Wayne Satellite building. 

She had, like, three cases to work on, plus that Arabic paper to write. Between the gala, patrol, a training date with Cass, a date-date with Tim, and the fact that the cases were all going to require some more field work, she should probably write the agenda for the Pre-Med Society meeting today, because, if she put it off, she’d run out of time before the meeting on Tuesday.

So she grabbed a Batgirl Meal from Batburger and then hunkered down in a satellite cave to do her homework and her casework, because it will save on travel time; efficiency was a skill she learned a long time ago, when gas or metro swipes had to be rationed until payday or the next score.

She wrote her Arabic essay on medieval middle eastern medical practices — because, again, efficiency — and she skipped the non-graded problem set, because she was doing some lab work for a murder in Robinson Park, and that was similar enough to bio chem.

She had a protein bar for a pre-patrol snack, and was just about to get ready for patrol when her phone, not comm, beeped to life. With a call from Bruce.

That was unusual this late in the day, and so close to patrol.

“What’s up, B?”

“Stephanie, it has come to my attention—” Never a good way to start a Batman interaction, Dick or Bruce, it didn’t matter, “—that you have started making promotional posts on your social media.”

She frowned. “What?”

“I understand it’s very common for people with online followings as large as yours to attempt to leverage it for income. However, I thought it best to point out that you did not tag your promotional post as such. And that can cause problems.”

She hated to repeat a question with Bruce, but she had no idea what he was talking about. “What?”

He took a deep breath, like he was choosing his coming words very carefully, “I do not want to tell you how to live your life or run your business. But given your notoriety and how it is connected to us, I am happy to offer our PR team. Really, you’re overdue for some media training. But I can also set up some things on social media and influencer culture.”

Very distantly, what he was saying was starting to come together.

“Um, Thanks,” she said, and she supposed she did need media training, paps were always crawling everywhere at the galas. “I’ll get on the schedule.” 

“Good, good,” Bruce said. “And remember to properly identify promotion posts in the future.”

“Sure thing,” Stephanie agreed, and the call dropped without a goodbye, because, well, Bruce. 

And then she took a deep breath, and then actually checked her twitter. 

Stephanie had stopped doing that about two years ago, when she’d started dating Tim again. It was very upsetting to the people of Gotham, and also the world, that a billionaire was off the market. Barbara had set up a script in her phone and computer that basically blocked her from having to see anything anyone said to, about, or in relation to her. 

And so Stephanie went about her life. Sharing pictures of her waffles and the nails she painted for Cass, and making hilarious comments on the batboys which always seemed to excite their followers?

She lost count of how many followers she had after it reached, like, a thousand people and she hadn’t wanted to get self conscious if it ever looked like she might inch up to two. 

But it was possible it had maybe passed that...a little. Which was pretty obvious in retrospect. The Waynes were social media staples, and she interacted with them online all the time. She might have gotten herself a little following. And her nail place might have noticed and thought of giving a regular with fifteen thousand (fingers crossed) followers a little discount for a plug to the people of Gotham actually made sense. 

Maybe she could get her nails done for free next time, or a discount on a massage. Her mind was already in planning mode before she even pulled up her follower count on Twitter.

She dropped her phone when she finally did, although she caught it before it hit the floor because she was not _that_ bad at her job. 

“Damn,” she whispered to herself as she looked at the number.

It wasn’t two thousand. Or fifteen. Or even fifty. 

Stephanie Brown had hundreds of replies and thousands and thousands of likes and retweets. 

And Stephanie Brown had two hundred and twelve thousand Twitter followers. 

She did, in fact, need media training. And probably a blue check mark. That felt like something she also needed. 

She was very, very quick to signal that her earlier nail post was a promotional, and then just kind of stared at her feed and her following, and even at her DMs, which did include several pitches for promotions and sponsorships. 

It was a lot. 

More than she expected and maybe a little more than she wanted. One of her advantages within the Batfamily was her anonymity. 

But, one of the advantages of knowing the Wayne family might be a very convenient way to pay for medical school. Because Wayne scholarships were good but pocket money was even better. 

She scrolled through her feed until Oracle beeped her to remind her of patrol. But she kept it in mind too, as she went swinging through the streets of Gotham. 

This had some definite possibilities. 


End file.
